Paid and earned media are not conducive to today’s marketing strategies focused on consumer engagement. A brands relationship with its customers is limited by paid and earned media to being purely transactional. Nurturing the channel and community your brand has created allows for transforming individual interactions into a more meaningful experience for the masses.

Starbucks is known for lots of things: great coffee, friendly baristas, and a near-complete takeover of practically every street corner in America. Did you know it’s also known for it’s killer social media strategy? It’s true! Take a look at some of these stats!

Whereas other brands might police comments not just for offensive statements but also for negative or antagonistic reactions to a brand’s product, service or corporate positions, Starbucks allows this speech to continue unfettered, even when it rises to the level of being present on their Timeline Highlights.

The recent rise in social media cannot be argued. It’s adoption from individuals to businesses has been astounding. But at what point does a business need someone to not only manage social media, but manage a community within it?

This week's episode comes from a subscriber question. Bill Gluth says: I’d love to see you create an online marketing segment on how social media tags into the sales conversation. I see lots of content, comments and sharing but I’m not hearing a lot about sales and revenue generated as a result of that effort.

Hearsay's announcement last month of Clara's election to the board of Starbucks brought us back together with the CEO and Founder, Clara Shih . We talked about several of the issues near and dear to our readers, especially those who are in charge of major marketing initiative for large enterprises...

While we are what we say in our Tweets, our bios also reveal a telling side of who we really are. In this study we reviewed the complete bios of 50,000 of the top @Starbucks followers to learn a bit more about how they present their life story as well as their interests, opinions, and preferences.